greater financial literacy across the income distribution? absolutely. it would be even better if we could figure out a way, and there's lots of ways to do that, for average people to accumulate assets other than their own homes. >> thank you for a very stimulating, thought-provoking presentation. [applause] . ..

>> the conference was hosted at wayne state university by the detroit economic club. [applause] >> all right, dave, i'm going to turn it over to you, rock on. >> thank you so much, beth, for getting us started. thank you all for for for being. it's really exciting to have this thing underway, we've been working on it for a long time. what we do at techonomy, up til now it's within antic i havation -- invitation only, leaders thing in the desert, and we wanted to get your message out in the broader community, particularly in the united states where we think there are some messages that are not

sufficiently understood. and that's what, i hope, you will be hearing throughout the day today. and the messages at this event are focused on four issues; u.s. competitiveness, the future of jobs, economic growth -- which is tied, of course, to the first two -- and then the revival of our cities with detroit as case study number one. we are very proud to be in detroit because we see it as a great city that has incredible potential that we would just love to help participate in that dialogue to help move that process forward a little faster. but what we really want to do is change the dialogue about how the world thinks about technology. because we really don't think it is understood or appreciated how rapidly the entire landscape is shifting because of tech. i mean, today apple's literally announcing the next iphone. that's cool, but that's just the most obvious example of things that continue to move at astonishing speed, and there's developments literally

everywhere you look. and we don't think leaders generally get that. so i'm going to give you a couple of little, quick housekeeping things that we need to know. for one thing, there is an app, te space detroit, so look that up and download it, it has all the program. it'll be in realtime all day, please use the app, detroit labs made it, it's very good. te detroit is the way to get it up on the itunes store. everything here's on the record. we're really into q&a and hearing your voice from the audience. almost every session we will have you guys up here. you don't have to just ask a question, you can make a comment, but keep it brief. we're videoing and live streaming everything. the live stream is available at techonomy.com, and thanks to live stream for doing that with us. there's a twitter hash tag, te detroit, so please use that

liberally. and now we're going to go straight into our first session. so i'm going to take the blue chair. this session, please, steve and josh, come out and join me. we're talking about entrepreneurship and american relevance, and entrepreneurship is one of the key themes throughout this event. i would love to wind it even more tightly with this session, and that's why we have these two guys to start the day. i mean, one of the great entrepreneurs of the american economy, steve case, who not only has such incredible impact with aol, but now with revolution is funding and helping to develop a whole range of companies in a variety of industries. meanwhile, living in the washington area has gotten incredibly involved in trying to help the u.s. government think more intelligently about competitiveness and entrepreneurship in particular. then josh linkner, a local star here who runs detroit venture partners as i'm sure many of you know, if you're from detroit, you certainly know that, a

supporter of this event which we're very grateful for, and i think symbolic of the incredible new energy that's developing in detroit. and i should also say that josh created a company calls eprize in 1999 here in detroit. it's been operating all this time. two weeks ago it sold for a nice exit. [applause] so here's the story of a local company that came from here, went all the way and, you know, he's done real well with that. meanwhile, he's invested in a ton of other companies. so i just want to start by asking you, steve, you know, when i told you about this, you immediately dropped it. why did you think techonomy detroit was a good idea? >> well, i think it's a great idea. i think it's great you're willing to shine a spotlight on detroit. it's not just about detroit, the story about entrepreneurship in america and how it is spread more broadly through the nation than we sometimes realize. obviously, silicon valley is the

epicenter of enormous innovation. tremendous companies, it's exciting, it's something we're all proud of, but there are also a lot of companies all across the nation that don't get as much attention. i think it's important to shine a spotlight on them. but detroit there is something special about it because in many ways detroit was silicon valley 50 years ago. this was the center of innovation of what was at the time the most fast-growing, you know, companies in the world when it was, obviously, the automobile industry. it's had a tough few decades, i think the statistics is that the population's dropped in half from its peak which is startling, but it's fighting its way back. i think the commercial that aired on the super bowl, clint eastwood -- i think he's better at commercials, by the way, than he is talking to empty chairs -- [laughter] it was an awesome kind of story of detroit fighting its way back and not giving up, and folks like josh who are investing in the companies here, i think it's

very important. so partly it's the detroit story, but it's more broadly the story around sort of the rise of the rest. the regions all around the nation that are e emerging as entrepreneurial hotbeds, and if we're going to get our economy back as a nation and get our unemployment down -- nobody's happy with a 2% growth rate, an 8% unemployment rate -- the place to focus is entrepreneurship. that really is the driver. we didn't become the leading economy by accident. it was the work of entrepreneurs creating companies and industries throughout the nation that we need to continue to build on that momentum and recognize that it is sort of the secret sauce that built the american economy, and we as a nation have to double down on entrepreneurship not just in silicon valley and new york, although they're awesome, but in detroit and cleveland and st. louis and denver and a lot of other places that are also becoming kind of interesting, emerging markets around entrepreneurship. >> i love that you just said that. so, josh, you're sort of, you know, the ultimate symbol of

local financial support for entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship itself, but do you think that message is understood in detroit? do you think -- how widely do you think that people get that here? >> well, before i begin, david, first of all, i just want to thank you for bringing techonomy to detroit. this is a town that is on the rise, and you're coming here and shining national attention is making a big difference. and also quickly, steve, thank you for your leadership, for your unwavering support of intrup near shup, so i just wanted to recognize both of you for doing this today. [applause] you know, here in detroit it's weird. it's like you can bump into somebody, and they say, oh, i hear everything that's going on, this bustling tech seen, and then you bump into somebody else, and they don't have any sense of it at all. so i think events like this, and i think we have to scream from the mountaintops that detroit is open for business, this is a great place to build a tech

company, and i think we still have a lot of work to do to get that message heard locally and on a global basis. >> it's so funny, steve's company is called revolution. jack dorsey was giving a speech, i don't know, day before yesterday at tech crunch in san francisco and talked about the need to be a revolutionary and that's the way founders and entrepreneurs need to think of themselves. and i personally have had a theory myself, and i wrote about it in regard to zuckerberg and facebook that the founders of innovative tech companies are the most impactful social revolutionaries of our era. but that implies a sort of an urgency that i wonder if is widely enough understood. that's what i'm driving at. any thoughts on that? if what you guys are doing is truly revolutionary, then either people ought to be really scared of it, or they ought to be getting onboard real fast. >> or both. i mean, there's entrepreneurs who are trying to -- there are two types of entrepreneurs. there are some who are looking to create an interest withing

product or service and have -- an interesting product or service and have somewhat modest ambitions. they're just trying to start a business, and that's fine. they're an important part of the economy. and the other which are swinging for the fences, they're trying to do something disruptive, it's more of a long-term built to last sort of thing. and they really have to have a passion and a perseverance to see it through. i saw this today when we started aol 27 years ago, only 3% of people were online, on average one hour a week. most people thought we were crazy. nobody wants to do this stuff, but we stuck with it, and it took us really a decade before we got traction, and then finally in the mid '90s things kind of took off, and everyone's like, oh, aol's an overnight sensation. no, it wasn't. so that's the kind of perspective that entrepreneurs need to bring. the opportunity is there are huge sectors of the economy -- education, health care,

energy -- that haven't really been disrupted that much in the last 25 years, what i think of as the first internet revolution, getting everybody to believe it was important, get connected, multiple devices, multiple networks, that's sort of been accomplished. the second revolution is how you use the mobility of the internet to transform other aspects of life. those are worthy, you know, great entrepreneurs across the country are supporting, and they are the industries that are going to drive, you know, the future. initially, it was sort of the agriculture revolution, kind of, you know, the midwest and then sort of the industrial revolution and then sort of the finance and media revolution, more recently the technology revolution, the next wave is where we need to be positioned as a nation, and we really need to recognize these entrepreneurs are in some ways american heroes, too, because they're the ones who are taking the risk of starting these companies that can change the world, but also make sure we have a robust, growing economy in what is now a

much more global, competitive world. >> yeah. i think the linkners and dorseys and cases are the american heroes. you have a very positive way you talk about interim neuroship, you wrote a book about the role of creativity in companies. do you think of yourself as a revolutionary, josh? >> i think of myself as a disrupter. and i think that many of us have that capacity if we're willing to go for it. i couldn't agree more, steve. i mean, detroit specifically was born on the spirit of disruption. folks like henry ford put us on the map, and as a result, our city prospered, and we were the paris of the midwest. and then we stopped doing that. i mean, essentially, we built these stifling bureaucracies, and our city crumbled. but today we're in the midst of a new revolution, a time when once again entrepreneurship is alive and well, and i think that this is the time to make it happen, specifically diversifying the economy. what the digital age has taught us is you don't need a silicon valley zip code in order to be successful. and you're asking are people

taking notice, people are taking notice with events and a lot of talk that's happening right now, and we're doing our best to pound our chest, but where people will really take notice is when previously vacant buildings are filled to the gills with bustling tech companies, when exits start happening, when people reinvent the community. that's when people are going the say, we've mad it happen. >> and the talent aspect. the most important thing around economies is talent. that's one of the reasons why washington is fighting a battle to build bipartisan support for high school immigration, making sure that the best and brightest don't just come here for education and are kicked out -- >> i love that you're doing that, by the way. we really support that. >> they're job creators, job makers, not job takers. but the battle for talent also happens at a regional level, so how do you get some of the people that did leave detroit to come back and believe that now is the time to come back? because there is, you know, a

burgeoning, bustling entrepreneurial ecosystem. maybe they went up here, maybe they went to school around here, obviously, a lot of great universities, but felt they had to leave because they didn't see the path forward for themselves and their family. now every -- now they have a reason to come back, and that's why it's so important, to create that sense of possibility, that sense of momentum that gets talent back, gets capital flowing, and then you get this sort of network density around entrepreneurship which is when these regions really take off. but it takes leadership, and part of what we've done over the last year and a half with the start-up america partnership is try to build up the regions, but ultimately it comes down to somebody, an entrepreneur like josh, who says i'm going to take on this challenge, i'm going to rally folks within the community, try to connect them to resources outside the community, and let's get moving here. this is our moment, this is our time, let's get going. >> josh, i loved what you said about responding to results, but there's a whole lot of scales of that. and i don't mean to keep

hammering on this issue of urgency, but i will because i feel it very strongly. you know, i travel to china a lot, i'm privileged to be able to do that. another form of result that is happening is that in places like china, they understand the role of the city in some ways better than we do. they are investing very, very methodically in infrastructure, in financial support for entrepreneurship, in education of very targeted sorts, and i fear that the kind of results that we will start to find maybe a little on the late side and in places like detroit is that the cumulative effect of all that investment in places like china and taiwan and even, you know, malaysia and a lot of other countries is going to put us way behind the curve by the time we realize those results. do you worry about that? looking at it more globally? >> well, i do worry about it. and the only thing you can do is play to your strengths. so if we try to compete and we try to be the beijing of the u.s. or the silicon valley of the midwest, we've got to be the

detroit of detroit. we've got to stop apologizing for what we're not and start celebrating what we are. what are we? we've got an incredible university system here. we've got beautiful -- >> right here. this place is amazing. >> we've got beautiful, tall buildings that are waiting to be filled up. we've got terrific roads, wonderful hospitals, we've got water, world class airport, talent base. so there are all these assets, so i think what we've got to do is shed our skin like a snake does. they can grow again. we've got to get out of the trap of apologizing for yesterday and complaining about the past. enough, stop. time to move forward and focus on building great companies here in detroit. >> and there's really two battles going on, competitive battles. one, as you mentioned, and i do worry about it s the global battle around entrepreneurship. if you look at the history of america, it is the history of entrepreneurs building these industries, as i mentioned. guess what? other people figured this out. part of the secret sauce is this entrepreneurship, innovation, risk taking, pioneering kind of spirit. so there are many countries, including some you mentioned,

that are being aggressive in making sure it's easier for people to move there from an immigration standpoint, make significant investments in basic research. they are stepping up their game, and if away don't double down on entrepreneurship, there is a risk we're going to lose. the good news as we sit right down, we are still the most entrepreneurial nation in the world. that's the good news. the bad news is there's the rise of the rest globally, and people are getting much more aggressive. there's also a rise of the rest regionally been the united states, and -- within the united states, and there's an opportunity for detroit and many others around the nation to get their act together, create the dynamic josh is talking about and really emerge with robust, growing economies around innovation and entrepreneurship. and it's important on the technology side even though, obviously, techonomy is about technology. there are technology companies, and there are other industries, but those industries have a technology overlay as well.

so in some ways everything is now a technology company. but when we talk about, we don't want people thinking we're just focusing on trying to create another facebook. a company like chipotle, basically a bureau toe -- burrito, is now a company that's worth $12 billion. that's only possible because of a good burrito, but also because they use technology. walmart started with one store in arkansas, they said, you know, people in small towns get access to more products at lower prices, now they're the largest retailer in the world. that's really been enabled by technology. so technology is both -- some companies you're funding are technology companies, but there are also many other companies that have this technology overlay, and can it's important to recognize that manufacturing, for example, which is important in this region is being reinvented because of the juxtaposition not just of manufacturing, but also technology and design and building new things in nimbler ways, it's reopening that opportunity.

>> if people have comments or questions, please, come to the mic. we've got a few more minutes for that. you know, the company i love that's an example of that, one of them, is zara. he's now the third richest man in the world, i read the other day. his company came out of nowhere, used technology and the internet to connect to these workshops where little women were taking knock-off patterns and producing them so fast, they were able to knock off fashions, and now they have stores all over the world. that's certainly not an ask, right? that is taking retail and fashion and clothing and upending it. >> i think the thing we need to realize is that technology is an enabler. it's not the innovation itself. so zara used technology to become successful, walmart used technology. but you have to have the original genesis of an idea to begin with. and i think that's so important. when you look at zara, they enable, they empower their people. so if someone sees a trend in san francisco, they can jump on it. they don't have to salute the flag and go up corporate

headquarters, they can act. and what i think we really need to focus on is diversifying our economy. we certainly need a robust, strong manufacturing basis, but now is the time where we have to diversify. one of the reasons we suffered so greatly is our entire city was tied to one industry, and when that industry ran into trouble, so did the region. and the second thing about technology, these are companies that are capital-efficient and can scale quickly. what used to take decades to create significant amounts of jobs can happen now in a matter of months. >> right. >> so i think it's imperative that the local officials and the universities in the country. it can make such a big impact so quickly. >> this is something i have spoken to both of you about. right now, and this is incredible for someplace like detroit, the tools are accessible to anybody. you know, with things like amazon web services, that's a great example. you know, anybody anywhere can build something with incredible scale or the ability to scale,

you know, and they don't need the tradition allocation-based advantages. and one of the things that's really interesting we're going to talk about more today is crowd funding, which, you know, the jobs act which you worked so hard to get passed really facilitates. i'd love to hear either of you or both of you talk about this new landscape that crowd funding and some of these other tools make possible. >> well, totally right. it's much easier and cheaper to get companies started than it used to be, and that enables a lot of entrepreneurs who otherwise won't be able to do things to do things. and it doesn't take as much talent or capital. also on the internet nobody really knows or cares where the designers are, they just look at something that think find value in. >> right. >> crowd funding which, basically, for those that don't understand it is using the internet to get, to aggregate small investments from a lot of people to be able to start a company or grow a company, and

there's legislation that passed, basically legalized crowd funding. there was a law passed in 1933 that basically said you can only invest in companies if you're rich. this allows kind of democratizes access to investing and also democratizes for individual investors who want to invest and also those who want to access to capital for entrepreneurs. it's probably not that important or that helpful in silicon valley because there's tons of money and venture capitalists in silicon valley. it's really important in places like detroit. so now you'll have the ability next year toes, basically, put your business online, explain what you're trying to do, and people can make an investment up to $10,000 each, and if your income is a earn level, it's only up to $2,000. there are and people can raise up to a million dollars in total through this mechanism, and that will be the difference for, i think, thousands of

entrepreneurs that otherwise wouldn't have been able to start a company or to have the beginnings of something, they wouldn't be able to scale the company. so i think it's an e nor pows opportunity for -- enormous opportunity for underserved regions and sectors. if you're in silicon valley focused on social media, plenty of people chasing it. if you're in detroit trying to expand a restaurant so you're the next chipotle or you have some product you want to develop and you want to take it to scale, crowd funding, i think, is going to be very, very helpful. >> when you think about detroit, if we could have 500 bustling companies, no one would say no thanks, right? that'd be fantastic. why aren't we there? well, perhaps because there's friction. what does it take to start a start-up? great ideas, which we have plenty in this region, great talent which we have plenty in the region, and the third ingredient is capital. so i think the jobs act and the idea of allowing capital to flow more freely and reducing that friction will in turn enable

entrepreneurship. the other thing we need to develop is a culture of risk taking. you know, in detroit if you fail, that's like a really negative thing. in silicon valley it's a badge of honor. so i think we need to start celebrating creativity and responsible risk taking, and that's a learning opportunity. >> that's a great one. we've got somebody over here, please, identify yourself. >> good morning, mark bennett. good morning, josh and steve, want to thank you for a tremendous program. one thing i've witnessed in the past 20 years as a entrepreneur is there's a tremendous amount of intellectual capital locked up within our corporate entities around this area. huge opportunity for innovation. used to transferring technology out, there's been some movement by some major companies, how do you think we can pull more of that out? those are market-driven opportunities that have much higher success rates, i think, than maybe pure start-ups that are sort of theoretically driven. >> who are you again? >> i'm mark bennett.

>> thanks so much. >> i think there are a lot of great people and a lot of great, large organizations. a lot of people in government, nih, a lot of the focus on next generation health and those folks on the, folks on security. i think they're very, very talented people, but so far they've chosen to stay in sort of a what they perceive to be a safe world in terms of a company that's been around for a while and will be around for a while. certainly, when i was graduating from college, you'd find a job, and you'd stay there for your career. that's changed dramatically partly because people are are moving around a little bit more, but also because people have recognized, including, unfortunately, in detroit, that it's not necessarily safe to join the fortune 500 companies. disruption does impact these companies, and the idea that you can be at gm or ford for your entire career, people now realize that's not as clear.

and so they're more open to other opportunities. now, some of it there's, obviously, different skill sets. some of it is getting the people that do have that creative, innovative spirit to recognize there is an opportunity with some of the companies developing here. even more importantly is how to you get the folks that left detroit to come back here. i'm sure there's thousands, probably tens of thousands of people who that are born and rad here or went to one of the universities in this area who'd love to come back here but really decided to leave because they felt there wasn't a future. that pool of talent, drawing them back, i think, is also a big opportunity. but it really is all about talent. it's an idea plus capital, as josh said. but the most important ingredient is talent. >> you know, one of the things that's also an important ingredient is training and education. i just don't want this section sort of launching our day to get finished without dimensioning it. and another community that is of great interest and concern is not only the people that are

working in these great companies, but the people who aren't working at all, and can detroit has way too many of them. and i'm just curious what the prognosis is for the sort of really marginalized and disenfranchised population of detroit. just quick comments from either of you, especially josh. what do you think is going to happen? what should happen, and what do you think is going to happen? >> well, if the economy grows, there's the ships that all -- saying that all ships rise and fall with the tide. the people you're describing, perhaps we're not going to become a software engineer and coding flash, but as the local economy grows, it'll create additional jobs. i'm optimistic that tech entrepreneurship will be a spark. but it'll go much teacher into the community. the other quick point on education which is really where it starts, i mean, obviously, there's a huge challenge in detroit public schools as throughout the country. to me, what i think we need to start doing is retooling our educational system for the current era.

because it was, it's an outdated system that was built 50 years ago, and we've got this nonsense with no child left behind, meanwhile every child gets left behind because we're not teaching them to think and adapt to the landscape at hand. if we can create an economy that's bustling and hustling, it's going the definitely make an impact on all of us. >> i think this issue of education particularly around some of the skills for the future, i refer to them as s.t.e.m. subjects, engineering, math, it's really important, retooling our higher ed systems to basically do a better job of growing our own talent. retraining people who had a different career and are looking for opportunities, obviously, is really important. i know it's controversial, but the issue of immigration also is important. right now over half of the people come into our great universities and get ph.d.s and master are from other countries x once they get them, we essentially for the most part kick them out of the country and force them to go home.

we should make it easy for them to stay here. and it's not because these are the people that do create the googles and the fords and some of the great companies that create thousands or tens of thousands of jobs. so trying to make sure we win the battle for talent globally is really important. right now for a lot of reasons i understand the arguments on both sides. we're not doing that. those folks are going to other place, those other places are getting to become more vibrant, entrepreneurial communities, and we're going to look back, i fear, and say we really blew this. now is the time to make sure we're focused on that, and we're doing everything we can to get folks who are going to be creating companies of the future, creating companies in the united states. >> i can't think of a better way to have launched this conference than to have you two guys on stage. i really thank you both for being here, and hope to have you on techonomy stage again very soon. thank you. thank you all. [applause] >> go, detroit! >> so, now, right into some

cities stuff which is a big part of the theme also along with entrepreneurship, and i'm going to turn over the stage to carla, the director of the sensible city lab at mit, and he's going to talk about a very provocative topic, the city as technology. so, carlo, come on out. >> hello. good morning, good morning, everybody. good morning. can i have the slides? yes. so, um, i i wanted to start with somebody that, you know, everybody's talking about these days, it's about big data. now, big data is about this incredible amount of information we produce today. if you, you know, we all know from eric schmidt's quote, if all the information was created from 2003, this is more or less what we produced yesterday and

today, over the past couple of days. there's another way, data i heard recently from singapore a few weeks ago was, well, big data is also -- you cannot put it in an excel spread sheet. but this big data has big consequences in cities, and that's what i would like to talk to you about today. call it big urban data. now, our cities over the past few years have been layered with many different types of digital information. and because of that the way we understand them and the way we can respond to them, we believe, is changing dramatically. we can collect a lot of information from our cities, and then we can process the information and respond to that information. i rust wanted to make an example of -- i just wanted to make an example of something that is happening like formula one. if you think about formula one 10, 15 years ago, if you wanted to win a race, you needed a good car and a good driver. you needed physical, solid

things. but actually today if you want to win a race, you also need something like this, a system made of thousands and thousands of computers. made of thousands and thousands of sensors connected to computers. a lot of information is analyzed, is collected from the race, is processed, and then decisions are made in realtime. and that's a little bit the same that's happening today in our cities. if you're an engineer, you would call this a realtime control system. a system that's basically made of two components, a sensing component and an actuating component. you know, sensing you collect information. and then actuating you respond to that information. and sensing and actuating is really what every dynamic system does and what every living system does. you know, when we meet each other, we sense each other, we collect information, we touch each other, smell each other and respond to that information. now, the amazing thing is we believe it's almost like every atom out there in our cities is

becoming like a sensor and an actuator. and i only have a few minutes, but i want to show you capital projects that shows these two check ins. the first project started by looking at something we think it's a big issue today, it's about the computer. if you take the computer, you know everything about it. every chip in the computer you know where it was produced, how it's moved across the planet, how it became the machine and came to your desk. the supply chain is very well understood today. however, a few years from now when we throw away the computer, we know very little about it, and sometimes actually what happens to it. so what we decided to do recently was, you know, work with the little chips onto -- [inaudible] if we then track trash. so put in the chip to follow the trash and see what happens to it. we did a first deployment that you see here in seattle. you know, involving really 500

people and 3,000 smart tags. there's sound, can we have it? and, you know, every possible type of object. and then following this we started tracing and tracking the waste. should be a video. yes. so 3,000 objects in seattle, and the daily deployment you see the city, after a few days you see some of the mainlandfills next to seattle, and then big surprise how far things started to travel. it was big surprise because they, everybody knows a small piece of the chain. but this was actually one of the first times where we could actually follow the whole, trace

the whole chain from the beginning til the end after one month or two months. a lot of the waste actually traveling all across the country. sometimes in clumsy ways. look at the waste that went from seattle to chicago and then down to baja, california, for thousands and thousands of kilometers, certainly in a nonoptimized way. well, you know, what we learned from this project, what -- if we have all this information from our cities in this case about waste and, you know, what happens to things we throw away, then we can probably redesign as engineers optimize such systems. so we can reduce a lot of efficiencies that you -- inefficiencies that you saw in those traces. another thing that was quite important was all of this data, if it gives us information about what's out there, then it can promote behavioral change. and actually one of the most telling things following the project was somebody who told us, well, you know, i used to

drink water in blast you can bottles -- plastic bottles and put the bottles outside my door every day, and the things would disappear. but actually, no, they don't disappear, they go -- [inaudible] and stay there forever, and now because of in the they stopped drinking water in plastic bottles. now, there's a third thing we actually discovered more recently that was quite unexpected. that's when a burglar came to our lab at mit and stole a lot of stuff including some of the tags that tell you where they go. [laughter] and here is, and here is a video about it. if you can still try to fix the sound, it might be useful. might be more fun. >> [inaudible] >> yeah.

anyway, that was on the machines. that's what happened. [laughter] [laughter] [applause]

>> thank you. so while this was just a quick example about sensing, i wanted to share with you another example about when you put more data streams together, that's what we are doing in singapore, so this was using sensors on the trash. but imagine you can collect much more information and get to almost like a living city where you know in realtime what's happening around yourself. so here is data in singapore from all of the networks. it tells you how the tv is behaving by using all these digital telecommunication networks, smart grid and also how much energy you're consuming and how that is related to temperature increase as you see here. how the city behaves during special event, you see the formula one racing in singapore and actually how people move there and the city changes behavior. even simple things like it makes taxis in rain. in singapore it's impossible to find a taxi when it rains, but

when you get this realtime information, taxi drivers and citizens can get a better match. and how the city expands and shrinks because of traffic during the day. and then how all this information from the island, from sing pore is a city, and there's an island actually connects with the global flows. the global flows are people coming to singapore and going out of singapore with goods, coming into the city and out of the city. so how all this realtime almost like a realtime web that has all this information about the city and helps you understand better what's going on. now, in the last couple of minutes i wanted to share with you a final project, and, um, that's about more the act chewuation side. so we see here, you know,

sensing the collection information, but how this actually can change our buildings, our cities. and just very briefly, we know about a project in copenhagen, the mayor came to us a few years ago with a very precise question that was how can all of this data, all of this technology help us to change, make the city more sustainable and change the way we move. now, the incredible thing if you go to copenhagen is that traffic in the city looks like this. copenhagen is a city where you had a lot of cars in the city center a few decades ago, and it's a city where where now actually 0-50% -- 30-50% every today done by bicycle. so we develop this bicycle idea that you can see in the video. now, i don't know if we can hear -- put audio? otherwise i'll -- well, anyway, the. >>ed is imagine a wheel that you

can retrofit to any bike, and when you brake, so the wheel will get your energy and then give it back to you. so by just changing the wheel, you will convert your bike almost in something similar to your -- [inaudible] when you brake, you control it, through your cell phone, through your smartphone, and when you do that, you actually can do a number of other things so you can monitor what you're doing, you can collect information about air quality, like in this case it tells you the best way to move inside the city. this air quality data collected for copenhagen, and all of this then you can share with your friends, you can just put it on facebook. with other cyclists, it creates a community there. or something that the mayor thought was a very good way to increase even more the number of cyclists in the copenhagen to something like a frequent flyer scheme. so instead of collecting air mile, you collect green miles,

and it becomes to incentivize the use of a bike in the city. so that's, um, that's the video. this was initial prototype. now we have the third round of engineering like in cars, in the car industry. a few years to go from the prototype to the final product, but we're getting very close to it, and hopefully it will be on sale next year. so i'll stop here and thank you. [applause] >> stay up here. sit down, carlo. now, we're going to -- carlo's going to stay on stage. please come up, panel, please come on stage. panel's going to be moderated by bruce cats who's vice president and director of the metropolitan policy program at the brookings institution. there's bruce. and he will be joined by a bunch of other panelists for our discussion how far can innovation take our cities. so, bruce? >> so thanks, david. um, and while the panelists get

ready, first of all, i just wanted to thank the sponsors here and applaud what you've done because you've done two things. one, you've taken a very broad view of technology and innovation, um, and you said it right at the beginning, david, it's not just about the next iphone, it's about connecting the dots between technology, innovation, manufacturing. the second thing you've done is you -- [inaudible] technology and innovation drives cities, and cities and metros drive national economies. it takes a long time for the united states to remember that, right? but 84% of our population live in cities and metros, and 91% of our gdp. if cities tonight perform, the nation doesn't perform. we're joined here by janet anderson who's an adjunct professor at wayne state, but most importantly works for city government, and detroit is really part of the restructuring. gordon feller from cisco's urban inknow vases -- innovations unit, michael little item john,

and you've heard from carlo. and it's very hard to moderate because all i want to do is tweet. but i will try to restrain myself. [laughter] um, i wanted to start with a question that really builds off of carlo's presentation. this conversation about technology in cities can be a very broad conversation because we're talking about efficiency and how we manage congestion and how we lower energies. we're talking about the integration of data within the public sector, within the private sector and the combination. we're talking about participation with social media, coproduction of solution. my sense and, um, again, dave mentioned this, is the united states isn't quite at the vanguard of this. you know, when i think about congestion pricing, i think about singapore. you brought up copenhagen with regard or to many of the issues. i want to start with the ibm and

cisco perspective of the world, maybe michael. where do you see progress within sectors, and where do you see progress within cities, and where is the u.s.? >> so, bruce, the good news is that there is tremendous progress across the country, but it's relatively siloed. so we can point to smarter water implementations and smarter transportations, smarter public safety, smarter health care, smarter grid and smarter building energy management. but that's not necessarily a smarter city. a smarter city -- and it was alluded to a number of times this morning -- is really all about taking advantage of the fact that a city is a complex system of systems. and so how do you take advantage of the integration of those systems, the integration of the data, the big data to move your city, to move your state, to move your country forward? and that's where we are lacking.

and the example i'll use is take a building, and you can have a building, and you can implement the best building information management system that exists in the world. and then you can implement the best physical security system that's in the world. and you'd be doing pretty well. but there's an opportunity to even better -- there to even better your operation by integrating the two. think of the possibility if you could take the data from the management system and the data from the building security system, think of the additional insights you could gain and how you could run that building, how you could manage that building more effectively. the same principles hold true for a city. why are we lagging other countries? mainly because it's sometimes we can't get out of our own way. it's the way we're set up, it's the way we're organized, the way we make decisions, um, that gets in our way, quite frankly. >> gordon, do you agree with that assessment, or are there

pockets where the u.s -- take law enforcement, for example, where we're sort of ahead of the curve, we've been doing for the last 15 or 20 years? >> yeah, there are exceptions, but there are still exceptions, and the question why has troubled us. and i think one reason that we now have concluded is the frame that is being used by policymakers, so the frame is about spend, it's not about invest. >> right. >> the frame is about capital expenditures when it should be about operating expenditures. the frame is about government as the lead rather than government as the facilitator. so we're trying to work with our customers in those cities where we see receptive ears, and we think the leaders of those cities are hungry for really profound change in the way the city operates and the city manages its business. still the exception, but some of them are not the usual suspects. so chattanooga, you know, not the city on the that you would expect on the left bank or

otherwise. but they have decided to make the investment in the building out broadband to every building in the city, and they're now seeing the economic benefits of that. it was an investment, it was not just the city government out of city budget, it was through other vehicles, so they were smart about the investment strategy. but one of the things we've discovered is that, you know, connecting the dots is hard. it's not something that government workers are accustomed to doing. so this is one reason why things get siloed very quickly. you may be seeing that in detroit. so getting people to break down the silo that tends to be the frame by which they think about their spend rather than looking across all of the boundaries in the organization chart to say what is it that's going to tie together and force collaboration, open the system to public engagement, maybe even crowd source solutions so some of the leaders like san francisco have really done things that are pretty smart about building the civic apps that harness not just the

wireless networks that are known by the city, but harnessing the public engagement. >> i'm going to come to detroit this just a second, but, carlo, given your presentation and given what is mit's global work, what we're really talking about is a city that networks. and yet cities don't particularly function as networks in part because government tends to be compartmentalized and silo, and i think your analogy to the building, our buildings are getting wired, but we're not really thinking at a district or city level. do you see the u.s. at the city scale in the vanguard of particular aspects of technological innovation? maybe that, or are there, or are there some real opportunities given what we're seeing in some the other global areas? >> well, you know, as you say and as we heard before, yeah, big challenge is how to integrate things. and integration is not easy because of the silos that come from the past. because when you have to do

cities, city's made of bricks and steel and concrete and glass. but how to combine all this with silicon, concrete and silicon is something we need to know how to do, and, you know, we need to fight against different departments. very few cities are bringing together the i.t. without a type of infrastructure. and now it's more and more needed, you know, if you want to do even new, say, bridge. then you also want to be able to monitor it, to see its condition, to see when you need to repair it, so that's the i.t. side that has to come together. so i think, you know, that's a part of the issue of how to bring together different parts of city government. um, i think another issue is about integrating data. you said -- [inaudible] data is in many different repositories, and there's two ways to do it. one way is to do it at the top, so actually to promote integration at the top and give incentives for companies, have a

lot of data say about energy, about other types of -- [inaudible] that will work to a certain extent. it works well in singapore, it probably works not so well in other context. i think the other way is what we will see more and more the next three years, really using people as integrators. so the people we produce every year, how that can be shared with others, and that's becoming the integrator for this intelligent, realtime network you were mentioning. >> so as we come back to this, i want to go to detroit for a bit. but as we come back to this, i think one of the questions for not just this panel, but really for the entire day is where are those pockets of opportunity, particularly in the united states, particularly with cities and metropolitan areas? the one thing about our system is that if city x does something, within two, three, four, five years you can see it spread through the system. in that regard we are highly entrepreneurial at the city

scale with innovating and then replicating innovation, and to some ec tent that's scaling to national -- extent that's scaling with national, state and then the private. so i want to come back to what are those pockets of the silos of progress that we might be able to blow through the system. detroit. >> um, we're in a great city, we're in a great metropolis. in many respects it's a tale of two cities. complicated fiscal situation, as steve case said, depopulation over a long period of time, decentralization. but if you're in the down up to and you take the corridor up to midtown, a sense of momentum here. so as you think about this question of the smart city, the intelligent city, the integration of systems and data, what are the possibilities as detroit really yes with les with some very, very -- wrestles with some very, very hard fiscal and economic challenges, and then what are the barriers? um, and that potentially, um,

can be removed through smart state and city action? >> well, first of all, bruce and the organizers of this event, thank you so much for asking. i've lived in detroit my entire life, 40-plus years now, and i've worked for the city of detroit over 20 years. and there is definitely a new focus on the condition of the city, on cities in america as well. because cities are the engine that built this country. >> right. >> um, i think what you overwhelmingly are struck by when you've been in the trenches as long as i have is that there are so many silos and breakdowns both within city government and within the region that your example of midtown, i don't think a lot of people realize how many tax increment districts we have in the city that create separate financial and governance structures so that

really as much as downtown looks better than i think i've seen it my entire life, the benefits of that are not integrated into, you know, the old neighborhoods question. so within the city limits you have a tremendous overlap and overlay of governmental jurisdictions, right? separate fund raising ability, separate governance. within the region i think it's 140 municipalities within metropolitan detroit as we try to address some of the environmental challenges, how do you bring all of these different entities onto one page? i worry about the capacity for planning, the institutional capacity to make use of a lot of these amazing innovations. >> right. >> that gasty is broad -- capacity is broad at this to make the region competitive in a

development sense. that capacity is within city government to be sure that our inspectors even know what green roof and, you know, all that engineering stuff, um, you know, how do you keep people's skill sets up-to-date if you don't have the ability or the mechanisms for reinvesting in your staff? it has so many layers to the problem. >> right. >> unfortunately, i've come off as more negative than not. >> well, i want to ask -- >> because one positive thing, if i may, is that we are is in such a weakened position that it's forced us to open ourselves to any mets -- methods, be it outsourcing and leveraging that private effort in capital and just letting you do your thing. in some ways we could be the libertarian dream here. [laughter] >> i saw two people leave the room. [laughter] here's a question, what's the advice for do detroit?

overlap, overlay, not an ip instant city in china, right? there's no unified government, it's fragmented at the bureaucracy level, and there's this capacity issue, serious capacity issue within government. what's the advice? >> well, i don't suspect that a lot of the entrepreneurs in this room who are the talent pool for the next economy in detroit are thinking how do i get a job with the city. so -- >> no career advice. >> no, but i mean, seriously. the young talent pool, the 20-somethings and 30-somethings are not thinking about the public sector as a career path. so let's just be blunt and honest. the city is not going to be able to harness the talent that's there that will get the city to the next place. so invert the question. not how are we going to hire those people, but how are we going to bring them into the process sitting where they are in universities, in the private sector, in the ngos that are dynamic and interested in the city of the future, and the city

has to invent the way to do that. collaborate, create communities of interest, harness that talent pool, um, and give them the resources where it's necessary if the resources are there. now, there's not a lot of city resource, but the city has the legitimization capacity to say you are now the agent of change. it used to be the department of x, and the department of x is now really incapable. i mean, this is a hard conversation to have when you're talking about services that should be delivered more efficiently and more effectively by a strengthened city, and that might be years away. but there's today, there's tomorrow, and there are the years between now and when the city is strong enough to be able to do it for itself. so this is part of the reinvention process is figuring out what kinds of public/private partnerships are possible that won't violate the law, because there are laws on the books that prevent these things from taking some shapes. but we've seen in europe, asia

and other parts of the world really interesting ways of inventing the process of partnering that don't involve giving away public assets and public goods. nobody's talking about that. >> i think the other thing, and i talked about this earlier, i think some structural changes need to be made to how government functions. right now there is, there are very, very, very few cities who have any type of an entity that's tasked with looking out and across. and the way cities are set up now, the way agencies are set up now, the way the budgets are allocated, they do not foster innovation. you can go to pretty much any agency in any city in this country, okay, and their planning budget, their project plan has been set up for the next three to five years. it doesn't foster innovation. and so having, creating an entity that is empowered, okay, to find innovation, to drive innovation across these agencies that has a budge is one -- budget is one of the steps to get there. >> and a few cities have created

the office of innovation attached to the mayor -- >> right. >> to get the innovative process, and maybe that's one step. >> i, i don't know detroit that well, but it seems to me that, you know, those ideas could work, but i'm not sure if they require all the investment from the kind of top down solutions. and, you know, i don't know if they are the key solutions here. ..

if the city became a backup and classroom, it's exciting to think about divisions or technologies, almost allowing people to hack into people to use the city, to use it for an experiment, and a lot of people will be excited to come here and develop new services and so on. it's a very exciting bottom-up way to do things because in a top-down way, to promote innovation, you can do it, but it requires a lot of investment. it's more like top-down approach. >> so the brand is poured by.

i expect most in berlin with the guggenheim getting richer and richer but this is economic activity is really booming. >> they're not competing visions. they are complementary visions, were frankly in the case of de jure, potentially this state has a very strong role. cities are creatures of the state begin to decompress mental lives these silos and stovepipes of government that cut across. that's one way. the second piece is the notion of almost like a hacker fund. let's take an issue. energy efficiency, greenhouse gas emissions, the low carbon city, writes? which is very much off the

building environment and let's see if we can move outside the building space into the district space so to speak. are these competing visions or they complementary and can we imagine with all this doubling up of tech expertise here that we can begin to move some of the coproduce solutions quicker? >> echo production in this case is possible when and if something's happened. so dte in the city and key institutions like worsening in the university have to get together and say we want transparent the run energy consumption are building. was it going to take to have a dashboard that you and i can access on your smartphone or kids can access in their schoolrooms are parents and home double tell them which of the schools of the city school district are cleaner and greener and smarter than others. something that would require collaboration, that would have been utility to share the data.

a lot of cities are now doing this to really change the game because now i have access to knowledge that will then tell me which school is least efficient and i'm going to focus on why that's inefficient. is it not whether rice? is it not least the right way. are the kids going to be the drivers because they commence their parents for kids and parents are going to get that schoolroom cleaner and greener. one key ingredient is transparency that makes data possible. >> detected to understand what the problem is. i finished up a piece of work for a regional economic development initiatives. that is to miss out these that is trying to recover her, trying to bring businesses and individuals back to the region. they went through an exhaustive process. a few weeks of soul-searching to

come up with what are the top three barriers to migration to that region? there were three very diverse group unless transportation networks. so the question is how can we apply smarter transportation principles to alleviate that? second with access to water. how can we borrow on d.c. water in sonoma county water authority ceased to do that. third was this body mass of education. the education is good in some pockets of the region and that in some. how can we use smarter principles, raced to the top, whatever. but it's really focused on what are the problems. let's take our breath and move on to the others. >> so that they take care and also folks have questions. the microphones are here. what i take from this conversation i want to get your

response on the advice is to think about the city is a network of players, some very large, like a henry ford medical come even some of the cultural institutions, some of the employers, et cetera. a network of players who can take their own responsibility, obviously in partnership with the government around certain sets of issues. and the michael's point about what is the right issue to tackle because in the southeast, there's no water. last time i checked, you got lots of water, the great lakes. not your problem. but there's obviously a number of issues, whether it's run energy, education, health. this strikes me as a way to get around the challenge of government is dysfunctional, government is compartmentalized. you got a lead agency here.

for americans. we don't need permission from anyone have time. it seems that might be part of the solution. >> before i comment about that, i want to be sure in your list of players who don't forget my brother and sister who have been employed so long they're out of the workforce in real questionable skill readiness if you will. i don't want to forget them in the equation. it's music to my ears to hear planning. the definition of the problem and information flow. those are the ingredients of planning. it's music to my ears to hear that. what kind of had a piecemeal approach. a couple initiatives in the city last decade, and gps chips in our garbage sharks attract crowds, helped analyze and the city depopulating, trying to

redefine rats in a more efficient way as well as tracking your personnel. i think of outfitting police cars with cameras. everybody has done that i think. those were seeded with grant money. we haven't been able to keep up to gps. right now we have not been able to keep up with the chips. >> they actually put the chips in the garbage and chart or the garbage goes. >> ray, ray. you know, i think there needs to be the seed money cannot be a federal, aid, but there needs to be an institutional approach that redefines. we have embraced cameras in police cars, so we now find a way, even though all the technology at that 70% to the base price of the vehicle. between the cameras in the

laptops in trying to think about all they have. they have a gps, whatever other type algiers. supertype to do that for so many reasons, but it does switch it back to the institutional capacity to plan and redefine good services and then of course defund them. >> question. >> and from itt tech. i would like to ask the question to carlos. what do you think keywords would do for industry. >> in terms of >> different industries and why people had responded to, like

google and other people can respond better to craigslist, something like that. do you understand what i'm saying? >> not exactly. >> they actually worked, like the sort of search. >> how to search the city. >> what do you mean, in terms of of -- >> keywords. you understand what i'm saying? a lot of people respond to certain words. okay, keywords is worse that a lot of people respond to in some people don't respond as well. >> i understand, but in terms of tuba city in which people are looking for -- [inaudible]

>> okay, i'm not sure in the best person to answer this in a sense of not too familiar with teacher. if you're talking about keywords in the city. >> industry, the keywords people respond to this kind of universal in a way. what language you speak. the keywords that when respond to a person who lives in singapore. where i live out, more people respond to craigslist than more or less google or ebay or something like that because it's more attached to the economy, getting something for less. >> i agree with you. to be honest i'm not the best person on how this could feed into it.

>> were raising sort of a broader issue, in particular with regard to the application and deployment of technology in different cities that have very different starting points, right in terms of race, ethnicity, deployment. so this conversation, which resorted engage on about efficiency, allocation, you know, it's hard to translate. the interface of individuals to the quote unquote economy is radically different in different points of the country. >> that's a really interesting question, particularly as it goes forward in a city like this but there's a whole range of cities that have depopulated radically in the united states and have large unemployment. it changes i think the nature of the deployment and nature of the

exercise. >> i thought he was a more technical person. >> i may be the least technical person though i didn't treat like a maniac. >> on scott also become a venture for america fell in the city of detroit and also the next energy center. i've a question for all of you. one of the things i've heard talked a lot about here is that this technology, software, data collection is a means to an end. one of the things i've noticed within the orange premiership community in the united states and conversation surrounding it is that the and do some type says social media application or app. so i wanted to ask you all wish you think because there's an enormous power social media as a means to an end, but the conversation is too often an end

in itself. so how do you think we can bring the two together or how committed the conversation started because in my field, that type of leveraging the technology could be incredibly powerful. but there's a divide between the two cultures. >> great question. thoughts? >> may be all say we talked to a lot of mayors who want to create networks of allies for the projects of cities are undertaking partly because they want to have access to all the knowledge and resource for social networking help the city tap and that's an understandable thing. but it's very opportunistic, a little bit mercenary. i what to build a social network in order to accomplish my goals. we have to explain carefully to the city theaters that often the

people of the social network have different ideas about how to go about the process of changing schools are improving buildings are making mobility and trends that more efficient and affordable in the city. often you get results from the social network that you weren't necessarily expecting when you asked them to participate in a conversation. so city leaders that we talked to who've been through this process actually realized it probably was worth it even though it's painful because they came under withering attack person when they start the social conversation with citizens that that is going to result in the policy you started your assumptions with. we had to basically say if you really want to open the process and get the public engaged, don't start from the assumption your ideas are going to be the best ideas are there going to be acceptable. that is a good humbling experience for city leaders to realize that the social network at the city is engaged in on

project x, y or z is actually not going to deliver what they expected at the outset, but maybe something a lot better. >> i also think, to the gentleman's question, there is a growing opportunity to engage the general public in solving some of these problems. if you go back to the example i used about the southeastern region, where water conservation was one of the bigger barriers to economic development, there are some things the city in the region needs to do. but there are also things identified, where if we were to distribute the data to the general public on water use, that was fun behavior. so there's an opportunity there for social media, smart apps to engage developers to help engage the general public in this big data umbrella around water

conservation. >> it gets back to your other point about trying to set priorities, meet people where they are. people in the southeast understand water shortage, right? this is a huge issue in the sweeps across a good person and the sunbelt. the crisis is the talent is the question goes back to the earlier panel, build off of the powerful production and started spectatorship rate going forward. that is really the fundamental issue in this parts of the midwest, given the last 30, 40 years of industrial restructuring. so against it is is really powerful fusion of setting priorities and figuring out how technology is one of the vehicles for achieving not, which is really the power of all this. unengaging the citizenry.

these are different cultures now. but there is fear that up altogether, which requires leadership and you do have a two plus two equals five kind of effect. >> most city leaders truthfully don't understand that this is the connector between citizen and city and there has to be an intelligent way of engaging around the supercomputer we carry around in a pocket that is the social media device. it's a tool for transparency because i like to hostage in a municipal buildings are inside a taxpayer can't energy costs. >> question over here. >> anthony pellegrino, representing the school of business administration. taking a back to the money, we mention grant money. asking the fed and the state is kind of a longshot, for both the

budgets of the cost of work, but i'm kind of curious, where can they channel the new funds and also can anyone shed a light on foreign investment as well? >> great question. we see the federal government scale back on this country. it's not a question of whether, but how much, where the state has got issues. how do we think creatively about public-private financing vehicles? >> i should technology finally the detroit has had a tremendous commitment from its foundation in the last couple of years and that includes spending a massive cleaning out for, to be sure it works project meant to draft the geographic changes, the patterns of the population in the city. you know, the thing about grant funding is your kind of the puppet on a string. your priorities become what's fundable and once the funding

runs out because it's again meant to be seed money, you still have to figure out what is it that makes us do what we do better, you know. i guess i don't want to focus too much of the great timing. i wanted to be part of operating. >> particularly at the end of the day if we didn't strike him you the costs radically. matches for buildings, but for cities. there's a whole bunch of tangible matcher x you could neo's to help seed private financing. >> i responded to the previous question that we can look at cities in two ways. one and a top down, for those technology cities, now we can reorganize. if you think about that you need quite a lot of a lot of government investments, developing platforms to do this from the top down. but the other option is have to see the city where everyone can

leverage the computer. this is higher. it now has a profit. how come you leverage this in order to promote good behavior, new action? and if you do this, then you don't need that much money from the government. in decades and he just seemed to be like a catalyst and then things will happen. small grants for foundation can be much bigger because you leverage everybody contributing. >> i want to apologize for the other folks who want to ask questions because for 45 seconds and counting down. last, i think this has been a very interesting panel to set up a cot at the traditional -- if the government is to do this, though the top down. we need a variety of interventions and the bubbling of energy in this city in the downtown, in the midtown. that detroit can be coming in

now, it can be a petri dish for a lot of texas innovations of interventions. so best part of the challenge is to go through the day. how do we send that signal that at this point in time in this city, in this metropolis, in the state it's time to innovate and experiment. thank you very much. [applause] >> inc. so much. [applause] >> you're a good moderator, bruce. there was a great panel. thank you to olivia. the first thing i always say it's about u.s. competitiveness because they think it all ties back to that. a next session, please come out jim doherty, a very good long-time friend of mine who is a fellow at the council on foreign relations is going to moderate. but organize this in conjunction with the council on foreign

relations as about u.s. competitiveness. let's get it underway, the panel is fair. all right, jim, take it away. >> great to be here in detroit. first time in a while. i have to make it happen more often. so were going to have a nice conversation. we have to cover a lot of a lot of things in 40 minutes, so we're going to start right away. you can see the panelists, backgrounds, michael, paul and ted, great panel. i'm 40 minutes that we try to cover as looking at infrastructure, education and immigration, trying to look at it through the lens of technology and the role of urban centers and take a look at what the current state is in the united states in each of these things, what some of our best as competitors are doing and maybe a couple sections on tactical

things the united states can you do have a job. we'll try to take the calls at the end of the campy without further ado, i want to ask you next to start. your last job as cio of united states of america. that's a pretty big job. so you got to see lots of things. you had great perspective on these areas, immigration, education, infrastructure. can you pick one or two and comment on the current state in terms of competitive in world. >> sure, when you look at the story of america, it is the story of entrepreneurs and the ability to disrupt matches the local level, but the global economy. unfortunately, what you're hearing is too much of the gloom and doom in terms of where america is that it comes to competitiveness. my view is that it is still the best country on the planet when it comes to starting up a business in advancing ideas you

have or access to talent. the challenge we have before us because we are the architects of our own destiny, the key issues we need to confront. if you look at the next 30 years, if we don't address i don't think we can remit the most competitive country in the world. first it comes down to immigration. it is broken. it makes absolutely no sense to educate some of the smartest people in the world with advanced degrees and then ask them to leave the country and go start up something elsewhere. why are you stapling right to their graduate application of these that were a green card. second, when it comes to education, the challenge we have domestically is that system is always broken as we look for the next 30 years. in detroit, for example, their 3400 i.t. job openings in the detroit mature region. the challenge is that we haven't

done enough in terms of retooling the workforce, in terms of transitioning from one career path to the other. i know there's interesting programs underway they need to be scaled, for example, the way community college is a program with a broad instructors around the world they trained people to actually move into the i.t. career track and at the same time, this is done in a 16 week period and 73 people graduated from the program in 27 of them have jobs as a result of that. we need to figure out how do we become better at retooling the workforce we are to have domestically as we try to make sure to remain competitive globally when a comes to immigration policy. >> paul. >> ford faces a big challenge. you have to have a engineering and manufacturing overseas. how do you make that balance? and what are the things that make the united states a better

place for you to locate things versus outside the united states? very specifically. >> that's a great question and to build up the next comments. it's possibly a slightly different perspective, especially focus on some of the things gone right to send the customer, without a huge customer base in the u.s. we focus on really creating products that customers want and customers value high-quality products. clearly backgrounds around the world in common things as you mentioned, jim, we have to maintain a global footprint in terms of manufacturing and education. but in terms of a commitment and some of the things that are really happening, we've recently announced, for example, over the next four years, $16 billion of engineering and manufacturing of the u.s. we've announced creation of

12,000 new jobs in manufacturing engineering here in the u.s. just this week, we announced another 1200 jobs. michigan, where were producing a new fusion. a year or so back we completely retooled our michigan assembly time and we are producing a whole range, some of them with technologies about power traits and so on. so there is a huge amount of good news here and it really comes down to working with all the key stakeholders to ensure without world-class products, that we leverage all of the local knowledge around the customers here in the u.s. want and really strive to make the u.s.a. u.s. a competitive place or manufacturing and exports, but also in the sense of engineering great products.

if i could really just one other point that out like to mention, the point around immigration, education and so on. we as an industry plays a little bit of crisis in terms of recruiting critical skills into the auto industry, particularly bound controls engineers, software engineers and just in general stem disciplines. and we're doing a tremendous amount to promote education coming to promote the technical disciplines, cheaper and better engineers and give them a career that can last many years, can last a lifetime. so i support all of the points you make, but i do just want to share with you some of the things. >> michael cundiff literally written the book on financing

education passed into writing a book on it now. maybe you could talk a bit about, you know, what is going on, the current state of education in the united states and maybe some of your view of what we could be doing other. >> well, if you look at the university level, the u.s. is still the predominant science and engineering engineer in the world. if you were quantitatively come look at all kinds of dissonance on the numbers because a very large engineering graduation rate in some curlers countries, particularly china. but there's a lot of dispute about what the numbers actually mean. in terms of quality, science and engineering in the u.s. and university level are so predominant in the world, though other countries are catching up as others have said because the u.s. was the only man left standing are the only person left standing at the end of world war ii and has a free field for two or three decades.

as far as k-12 is concerned, things are quite different. do you have huge disparity in quality, even with a few 50 miles or so, i think we were sitting today you can probably find outstanding quality, science and math education, k-12 and terrible quality. and that's a microcosm of the u.s. as a whole, which has huge inequalities in k-12 education system. so its average performance on all the indicators is medium among developed countries are some of the mediocre if they want to be critical. the top tier does extremely well, the top quartile graduates from k-12 u.s. schools is very well by international comparison. the bottom quartile is terribly, said the median is somewhere in the middle. so if you're worried about the science and engineering

workforce questions, almost all of this people come the top or child in the k-12 system with all of its problems, and there are a lot of them come is producing plenty of people if they can be tracked it to go into science and engineering will do extremely well. but we are leaving behind the bottom quartile. we're doing very badly. that's an equity issue. but the workforce issue of the non-science and technology story. you really want people to be literate in numerous in all occupations these days. so that's a quick overview on the education side. >> if you get a chance to go to a commercial, there's a great program called renewing america and it's definitely one of the best places to find information on this topic as it gets updated. ted, maybe you can comment on what she think the most important issues are and what should be thinking about.

>> i guess i'll be slightly gloomier from a restarted because because there's two stories in the u.s. economy. one is innovation, entrepreneurship, start a, u.s. is unparalleled, continues to be that way. if you look in terms of spreading economic benefits broadly throughout the economy, we have not been terribly well in the last 30 years. every school definition is one creating a lot of high which work towards people so the standards of living continues to rise. on that standard, was not done tremendously well over the last several decades. if you take kind of the industry is to go back to the 50s and 60s, the ottawa industry employed millions of people directly and in the spinoff. shake the showpiece industry of our current era, consumer electronics, smartphones, televisions. the supply chain is all in asia. a lot of value added from a lot

of smart people doing creative things, but a lot of the work not expanded in the united states. consumer electronics is not the employer, said the expansion afforded to try to have a big impact here. were not seen the same thing on the technology side. a lot of the challenges we are are in fact moving into another era achievement as they disrupt the changes david argued at the outside and is undoubtedly correct, we as a country have to think strategically about how do we do better for more of our people in this next era of disruptive change than we did in the last one? is that there were no zero-sum global economy. we can all rise together, but relatively speaking, we haven't done well for a broad swath of our people for several decades now and you can see the results in a city like to trade now. >> when you look at that view,

you've got to think about the global population. the 7 billion people in the world. there's only 310 million people in the united states. therefore the only way were going to be able to compete in the global economy is to create a destruction abroad is of our economy. when you think about 310 million people competing against the rest of the world, what becomes really interesting here is that talent and capital is going to flow where it's most welcome. from a public policy perspective, we need to make sure we had danced the agenda of the ball comes both the talent in the capital. and companies that have been created here in the united states, would you go back and look at the auto industry, whether you look at what's happening with the semiconductor industry, classically what happened to intel when it came to manufacturing memory card and shifting to ship spirit way to think about the broader economy

in that context. i think the big problem at the base of this pier and it is fundamentally education. across the country, there's 3.6 million job openings today, 3.6 million. we just are not able to find a talented workforce to be able to fulfill those jobs. >> paul, what are the things that are uniquely great about the american system that worked for you and what are the things that are uniquely not so great you'd like to see fixed? >> good question. actually some of the numbers you just about are some of the numbers i spent a lot of time thinking about. they're a 7 billion people to vote, only 300 million in the u.s., the 300 or so a lot of people. the otto industry to 7 billion is less than 100 million per year, around about 15,

16 million here in the u.s. the numbers are big in absolute terms. they may be smaller in percentages, but what is absolutely compelling for us in the auto industry is that customer base of the number in service, effectively expect for the foreseeable future to have a very strong auto market. it comes down to the u.s. senate could say the same thing for many other regions are many other countries around the world. i think what is unique here is clearly an understanding of the environment, the customer. if you come back to my initial comments about focusing on the customer and producing products that our customers really want and value. sos and understanding that the market customer manufacture in the sense that the economics distribution, the supply base

that i talk about the 12,000 jobs come in the adjacent jobs in the supply base of related engineering activities. there's a big multiplier on that number. so i just keep coming back to the market itself, the opportunity to put growing vehicles out there, to focus on the things people really want them to tie back with jobs. you know, historically our industry, particularly the domestic manufacturers here in the detroit area, have this kind of images, you know, vehicles that are not high-quality vehicles that don't perform well for my fuel economy's good in just one area we've been focusing tremendously in the last two years on fuel economy and emissions. they've made a commitment to

engineer the highest quality vehicles and the best fuel economy to pay every market around the world. if you come back to some of the investments i mentioned earlier, a very large percentage of the investments have been in very high technology, whether their hybrid vehicles, plug-in hybrids, battery electric vehicles, we now have six electrified vehicles here in the u.s. a vehicles that achieve over 40 miles per gallon. most of that engineering was done right here in chicago, at our engineering center in dearborn along with the supplied in a lot of component manufacturing is coming into the area as well. the fact jury manufacturing power, electronics and so on. so it really does come down to the commitment we've made to the focus on the customer, to focus

on engineering degree questionable products and obviously you need to market knowledge and you need the engineers. and it just keeps tight right back to your point on education and the technical disciplines. >> michael, who if anybody is getting it right at scale that we can learn from? >> i don't think there's any model out there that is -- >> some pieces of the model, for example, in some countries, any countries actually, the government can really determine what percentage of the university cohort is going to nature or specialize byfield? so if you see numbers coming out of china, the numbers of scientists and engineers being graduated a share, it's a very high her. i forget what it is, 40 some% of

those graduating are in science and engineering. but it's mainly an engineering story. it's 33%, i think, of every graduating cohort from chinese universities and engineering. that is not because chinese kids are saying, a third a third of them saying they were to be engineer and i'm going to go that way. it's pretty because her happily because government policies mandating or incentivizing high percentages going into engineering and has to do with chinese government been a long time since the revolution dominated by actually engineers in the government circle. so that can't be done in the u.s. so far as i know. you can't say to stamford at the university of michigan, you'll graduate 33% of your bachelor's degrees in engineering next year. so you have to make it

attractive. >> or could we incentivizing aquatics >> you can incentivizing and we haven't done very well on that. in fact, to pick up on paul's comments and on task, one of the problem i think has been the really smart kids, highly skilled, sophisticated, challenged kids are sort of voting with their feet away from engineering careers because they see what has happened to the auto industry in the u.s. and maybe their parents worked in the auto industry and was very successful. so unfortunate with the parents are timed them off in his don't do what i did because it worked fine for my generation. but look what happened to the generation that followed me. they got laid off and so on. so one of the real problems i think is that disruption -- were interested in disruptive technologies and so on in this discussion, but disruption of agencies that the cyclical sort

that goes up and down and up and down is actually not a healthy way to operate industrial and educational system because the signals go back to the high school kids when there's a break in an industry like the auto industry, saying maybe you thought you wanted to be an auto engineer or systems designer or whatever, but look what happened. so you should go to finance. that's where you should be going now. unfortunately ,-com,-com ma i don't know the stories in michigan, but in many engineering schools, significant percentages of kids majoring in engineering don't want to be engineers. they want to go into finance. the engineering degree is a ministry degree to finance. that's not healthy. >> so takamori talked about education and immigration, nothing yet about infrastructure. under the something you think

about. >> limited to challenge the concrete things being done. infrastructure is just bizarre because we're the greatest free enterprise country in the world. most of our infrastructure is entirely socialist. this completely government undead, requires appropriations, barring at the government level. go to europe and almost all of the roads, sewer systems, often in areas of expanding broadband, other things that, public-private partnerships. something the obama administration is in talking about for a number of years. a small amount of seed money from the government that brings in a lot of private money sitting on the sidelines, that's looking for investments in things that pay longer-term. toll roads is a classic example. so we do far less than we could do an infrastructure as we don't have appropriate structures. you do see interesting things happening. i mean, new york is set up an infrastructure bank to do with the state level was not at the

federal level. chicago, mayor emmanuel announced the launch of a $7 infrastructure project in chicago, again to bring private money sitting on the sidelines. so that's a very good example of what can be done. the u.s. is losing ground on a lot of key components of infrastructure and for understandable reasons. governments don't have an awful lot of money. so if you're waiting on the line on government appropriations in government borrowing for infrastructure investments, that is not the best way forward in the current environment. so that's a very good example in the infrastructure. symantec couple other things that are low-hanging fruit. you talk about a competitive international economy. if you go around the world with every major country has a national effort to attract foreign investment. it has plummeted to me how much lost out to china. europeans about steady, we've lost a lot of ground.

oecd looks at investment promotion efforts at the national level. u.s. is last in terms of effectiveness. without a seller solves for the world. of course everybody would come to the united states. with 310 million people. we got to go and sell ourselves to the rose businesses. finally on the export side, 60% of our exporting the soundbite large, multinational companies. many small and medium-sized countries into the games. and medium-size company in germany with experts to china can go use the embassy facilities to search for customers and build the base you need to do that. we don't offer anything like that to american companies. there's a lot of things we can do basically to sell ourselves to the world as an attractive destination to invest and to export from that were not doing. >> back to immigration for a

moment. are there countries out there, if we could emulate their immigration policies are still aspects of it, what countries are doing it well now that you think the united states could come from quick >> again, there's not a perfect model out there yet. i think what you're seeing across the world are countries that for example the middle east, are trying to build incubators, ringing in people, but i'm not sure if that sustainable long-term when you think about it. duplicate some of the work happening in in you, for example, to try to attract foreign investments come in to try to attract more entrepreneurs. but i'm not sure, it's still very early in terms of the results out there. i think for the last three decades, the u.s. has had historically a very healthy

immigration policy, but in the last decade or so, we've kind of gone the other way. when you think about the number of immigrants set of common adults amazing companies and created jobs in the hundreds of thousands, we can't be looking at other markets because i don't think there's like the perfect model. but we took back it would happen in the 1970s in terms of the uss and historical model, we did encourage immigration. a lot of people came in a science, technology, engineering and math by next background. if you look at silicon valley, you see the fruits of a lot of it. >> you a comment. >> i spent seven years of my life painfully as a member of the commission on immigration reform, which is chaired by barbara jordan in the 90s this was. the way to describe the american immigration system is its

enormous, represent something like a third of the world's total immigration into the one country with 7% of the worlds population. its enormous, but it's terribly unbalanced. it's dominated by family ties and skills-based immigration is an afterthought in the current system. that's the problem you're referring to. it's also a balanced in a different way, which is as an expedient led by industry actually come expedient because the system is hard to change. we have a dominant smell in the skills base side, we have a dominant of temporary migration over permanent migration. that is not healthy enough time to get these kinds of peculiar outcomes. so the system is enormous. in these reform. it's not that you need for immigration. it's such you need to have a better balance within the immigration system.

as far as who does better, i never thought i would say this i must say. i spent many years living in britain and they had a hopeless immigration system i thought, very badly administered, very badly thought through. they now probably have the most thoughtful analysis of skills needs treatment by immigration in the world. they've leapfrogged everybody else. there's something called the migration of issa re-committee. as a government-sponsored entity, that is independent and the government valassis group, is there a shortage of let's say ford says there's a shortage of systems design engineers in the automotive industry. they will analyze the question until the government what they think in a very sophisticated way they do it. and the government can say, too

bad for not going to do anything about it, or we're going to respond to this set of recommendations, but only part of it. the big advantage of the system is to have an independent analysis of claims of shortage or surplus. right now the claims of shortage, claims the surplus in different areas of high skills. if you had an independent force, it would say we can't find any signs of shortage in this area, but in this area, we see actually grow market problems and they published a report. it's not just a private report. they published it, make it public. in the newspaper discussions of these issues in britain you have an intelligent discussion of these issues based on data, whereas here what we have is, well you know what we have. we've claims of shortage, claims the surplus and nothing ever happens. >> on to encourage anyone with

questions. i keep having to make sure nobody's there. if i cannot also, imagine they could also apply the model domestically. so in the state of michigan from the looks of it is the workforce investment centers coordinated closely with industry inside, what types of graduates doing it to the next 10, 15, 20 years? and then guidance counselors at a scene in terms of what the industry of the future are. i remember when i was in high school i had i.t. with industry to go when, no transparency about what the future was going to look like. i would argue that's probably most kids in high school are doing today, plainly picking professions rather than having some type of data to decide. >> interesting. a lot of the analysis authority been done. as you start to look at the pipeline of k-12 and invest the

education and really look at what the future needs. i've heard ready to graduate in terms of skills in the industry is, what does it take to make our industry track is individually? i think of it could just get our arms around a lot of the background is dirty done. it's kind of a call to action. >> yes, sir. >> great panel. my name is glenn oliver and our company operates the global dance for the utility industry. so i interact with a lot of city leaders and government leaders. you know, in relation to a topic you're, technology and cities, one of the things it is the challenges you've got a huge amount of innovation that is out there, even here at a local level, particularly someone out of ann arbor that is available to the cities, but she still have the reload and further

resistance to change in city government. i would like to note the panel thinks about the merits of possibly the federal government using its resources like it did with race to the top of digital medical records to provide some incentives for the folks on the local level to become more open to innovation and to elegy that would help them deliver services and manage their infrastructures for some of these new technological solutions that are out there, but are just reluctant to adopt. >> great question. >> all give it a shot. bruce's point about how cities are looking at each other and seeing what the best innovations aren't trained to adopt an. i think it's not a seamless process at all. if you have asserted federal role, identified to the best

practices, there were three words and incentives for adopting areas of technology adoption, innovation. that could be a very valuable exercise. one of the things that modern technology does is allows for very high-speed rapid exchange of ideas and you don't see that operating in governments the way we need. so i think that it's an important idea. >> to answer that, i also think the federal government could put an incentive is to hard wire the outcome that is looking as far as dollars are concerned in terms of infrastructure investments, but it's probably more important in terms of leadership at the city level being open to technology, been open to innovation. all give you an example. in the city of washington d.c., for example, when it first came and from the city council decided to say they were going to pass a law because he was

going to disrupt sort of the traditional model in terms of how taxis are regulated across the city. he suddenly saw this kind of clash between the old world and the new world in terms of disruption. at the end, they resorted a campaign an uprising by the people of the district of columbia and now it operates air. a lot of the people, the actors at the city level also has unhealthy relationships try to preserve the status quo. i think it's impossible import me when picking leaders, we elect leaders able to embrace to elegy to embrace the future rather than try to protect the status quo in the name of jobs than in the name of a lot of other areas around procurement. >> when i was last in academic,

i think i should say one of the strongest defenders of the status quo is academia. since we are here at wayne state, in an academic institution, i think it would be useful to pick up on the point to look at our graduate degrees structures intersect but to me of the nonacademic labor market. right now our crutcher programs are focused on producing people with phd's are the academic labor market, which is not expanding very rapidly if at all. and yet you have companies looking for very highly educated people, whom they can't find. part of the problem is the academic system is now developing in england to mention very quickly a dozen of the kind of graduate degrees that intersect very closely at the technical level, intersect very closely with the needs of the nonacademic labor market.

so one thing to look at is the developing professional science master's degree programs around the country. i think there are that many michigan, on the michigan state university has been a leader nationally in the effort. but there's now nearly 300-degree programs, which are science or engineering plus basic business skills. >> sir, next question. >> name is gary samuels. i'm a salesforce.com. i question has to do with mentorship and collaboration as relevant to the cooperation now about educating and retooling. it's also relevant to the discussion earlier about orange partnerships. the question of the comment is if we educate and retool somebody and make it taste in a position, there's still a risk of assimilating and been able to perform well. i'd love to hear comments from the panel run what can we do to it with mentorship and

collaboration programs within the corporate environment or business environment in the same conversation for the community view of an entrepreneur gives a great vision and talent he may be missing something. he often is a cofounder or people who can be around the economics of his business and so forth. if the general idea of how we can improve mentorship and collaboration for entrepreneurs as well as people being retooled to find jobs. >> you want to take that? >> is a great question. my comment is an answer almost between the two questions. one of the game we been embracing in the last several years is the broadest concepts of open innovation, so partnering with nontraditional partners, whether they be established tech companies, smaller startups, entrepreneurs individuals and so on, harnessing the innovation to bring it. and certainly to the first question i can vouch for the innovation being developed right

here in the michigan area. i do think that a couple things are appropriate. thoughtful incentives to actually help accelerate kind of seed money, to kickstart these things. but we have to ensure that the underlying technology or innovation is good edited in a global sense, but in terms of the technology itself and the business model to ensure the sustainable. so the second question, as we actually bring new engineers and tour companies, actually steering through those critical years, whether they're making a transition from another industry or whether they're making the transition from academia are absolutely critical. so things like mentoring on the career development, creating the type of work environments of the

culture they expect coming out of college are all critical things in things that we focus on a lot at ford. .. doing to help foster and promote mid sized companies to export overseas? >> m i'm happy to take -- not nearly enough. is the right answer. i mean, we have a commerce department, that's part of the

mandate, but the money that goes in to it, is pretty minimal. there isn't the kind of coordinated focus export effort at the federal government that you see, for instance in germany. i think a lot of possibility for collaboration, you have people working on the ground in china doing exactly what you're talk abouting and, you know, the friend of mine, jeremy who wrote -- how to sell anything to the chinese is working with state government in missouri and new york. a lot of innovation is taking place at the state level. i would like to see more at the federal level. we are out of time. please join many me thanks a great panel. [applause] we appreciate it. so the next whole segment of the program is going to be devoted to the inic of manufacturing and the future of manufacturing until the united states. i'd like to bring out my long time colleague when i was at "

fortune" magazine. eric please come out to lead the discussion on the diy economy. thank you, eric. >> thank you, great to be here. let me just quickly introduce our panel list -- panelists. please to have a seat to my immediate left is grady burnett. who is global marketing in facebook and lived in an an are an an arbor more many years. mark is a ceo of -- which has a recent facility that opened up here not too far from the airport. we'll be talking about what we do there. the den nay ringelman is inkey go go is co-founder and coo.

and which is an interesting pratt form for manufacturing. what we're going to talk about today is the do-it-yourself economy, and how how different tools have become available to entrepreneurs beyond just what we have become acooch to in the internet world. so the cost of producing a start-up, you know, has declined dramatically in the past decade, seen the -- mobile and internet start-up. we're starting to see many of the same tactics and techniques being used by start-ups and other industries. in particularly in manufacturing. and i think it goes all along the chain from, you know, ways to fund your product with indy go go and ways to product

property type your product ways to manufacture it, and ways to market it and to reach out to the customers. after of the fact with the social, you know, facebook and other social streams. so let's talk a little bit about where we are today, obviously a lot of people talking about detroit in the election sb and bringing back manufacturing jobs. but i almost think that miss misses the point. yes, we want to shore the manufacturing base. in my mind what's the new form of manufacturing that is being opened up. what are we seeing here in terms of the types of people who can now consider themselves manufacturers. is it possible to great the gm in your garage now? mark? >> absolutely. so some things people don't

necessarily realize today. the cost of a computer numberically controlled is come down something on the order of 95%. we are training how to use the classes. they are not world class at the end of the session. if you are patrick buckley and you want to do an ipad case and take three cases, ninety cays later, you could have like he did a million dollar company. they did $3 in the second year. $10 million year. square did the original three prototypes. they are doing fine. it has gotten smaller. typical when you do a software start-up, now you need $75,000. you can do a hardware start-up for the same kind of money. we had doesn't and dozens of

crowd-funded project come through from 10,000 to $100,000 that got them through the prototype stage the first run in manufacturing nap is new to the world. you haven't been able to do that for the kind of price points. den nay all kinds of amazing projects on indy go go to my favorite one rented one is the building -- what is the -- [inaudible] yeah. tell us about what the products and companies that i have merged on inkey go go and how do you see it opening the opportunities that would have been maybe been hobbyist in the past. >> a few young europes who were

passionate about keeping bugs away. we've had that problem before? flies, that's right. so what they did is put the creative minds to work and came up with the awesome contraption to the benign fashion shoo away flies. and what they ended up doing is they used this which leveraged facebook and the social media. they ended up raising almost $600 ,000 by offering their product as a way to raise money to built the product. so what was fascinating about that as well as other we've had campaigns raise money for 3-d printers. we had campaigns raise money to make the next film, we even had campaigns that are doing charity or cause-related stuff so people funded their baby. we had a couple who couldn't afford ivf inveto for thelyization. they got the rate of $10,000 to have a baby. so what is so incredible about

this, and what we were talking about . >> the crowd goat pick the name? >> yeah. what's so powerful ease specially from products and services, we had a campaign who two young women wanted to create a solar powered environmentally friendly inflatable light they could giveaway in a model to the developing world. a lot of women and children die every day get injured from the car -- lamps. they came up with a cheap and affordable solar powered system to light peoples' homes across the world. they ended up raising $60 ,000. the bug people $600. what was true for both of the cases because was product, because in a way preselling the item, because people who

contribute to the idea and the project actually gate perk in return. oftentimes for a product-base the actually product is the perk that you deliver. they end up mitigating the risk of overfunding or overfunding their production. they raise just enough money to produce just enough product that was actually purchased in the campaign. so that makes any sense -- >> right, the preselling. >> the social aspect to this. which gets to, i mean, maybe you can address this, because you sort of see the marketing start before the product even exists, right? the marketing starts with the core group of maybe what you call early adopters. can can be the most loyal customers. they cheer you on. once you have the product, a lot of people are find fact social that the facebook, that, you know, is a great distribution

mechanism for connecting with new customers and getting people to recommend those products down the line. >> yay i think the distribution is incredibly important. if you think about how we make decisions. we make them by our friends, family, and coworkers do and what the platform of facebook is allowses you to engage the community in a word of mouth in a way that never existed before. you can act elevate those friendships, those people most passion passionate and have them tell your story. i think it's powerful. if you think about a ground funding idea i saw recently, idea, the university of michigan, there's a football player who played? a couple of years ago who graduated and like most college athletes is going in to the work force. he jumped back in to the community in florida. as a new business that is about

the sustainable farming and eating healthy in the community that has not done it, and he's doing it through. he funded this. and distributed it through facebook. and as a result, i contributed to that. i'm excited. that's how increasingly the things are happening. >> what kind of businesses are you seeing on facebook? i think you mentioned to me a woman who started making toys or pickup pickup pickup puppets. >> it's a such a range. it's great. when you think about -- it always starts from a personal set of interest. almost business story on facebook starts with a person connecting with their friends on the page, talking about a set of interest, realizing maybe i have a business opportunity here. creating a page, ingoing from that. the woman we talked about is a name in north carolina business. and it is a kids clothing

business. and it's based in north carolina. they basically distribute economic platform on facebook. they do it through the southwest, southeast, and midwest. she was selling as a hobby at first. her husband lost his job. he made it a career. she started doing more project. realized she could build a business. funded that through the community and a bunch of different stunts and she found her entire customer base that way subpoena she found the entire work force which is 80 people. she built a business of 80 people. >> she didn't have a website. >> she sells through facebook. she found a community of people that care and pace -- passionate about the product. and the networking bilged and she shipping product all over the country. >> right. tell us about some of the products that you're seeing on the platform and how would you sort of compare and contrast to

where in the cycle would you as a entrepreneur take advantage of your platform versus some of the facilities that are available. >> sure. the way we fit in to the ecosystem is distribute manufacturing. we enable people to reach out no to out only the local community which is it is strong. but also in a global market, and so, you know, we allow people to, you know, produce product, next to the customer. and what we are starting to see is that people are kind of falling through, you know, they're using the crowd funding knowledge determine the appropriateness of the product is someone going to buy it. are they interested in if. they'll do prototypes at

techshop and then if they are, you know, thinking on a global basis, they'll use a platform like ours to push their product out in the globe. that definitely what we're seeing shape up. and that ecosystem didn't exist five years ago. i mean, it really didn't. it's a emerged over the past three years this idea that you can come up with an idea, you can reach out to your market, determine whether or not they want it and fall through the prototyping and manufacturing side of things like that. you know, and that's exciting. >> we talk a lot about jobs at this event, and everything you're talking about, you know, it's very positive and encouraging because now, you know, anyone can come up with the product idea that needs to be manufactured. they don't need a million dollar facility that is available to them them. but the flip side that okay, once they prototype it and found

their early customers, and they're scaling up, you know, past 500 or 1,000 items, don't they then just go back in to the that traditional scale manufacturing. does that create jobs here or abroad? >> is it a solution for the job . >> yeah. and it is because this is like the -- [inaudible] when you start using the internet. when you started getting e-mail, it was like why can't i use it with everything else. what we've done is encourage people to think about doing this in a new way. where we have kind of -- is that we removed the complexity of talking to people overseas. there is [inaudible] where people as they go to volume need to do that still, but what we are finding sz that

people are starting to think critically about everything in their supply chain. and that includes whether or not they can use local resources to do what want to do. so what we are starting to see is that people are bringing jobs back locally because it just kind of makes sense to them. in many cases it's less complex than sending stuff overseas. [inaudible] important things going on with supply and demand curves as well. specifically because the robotic tools are cheap relative to where they were twenty years ago. you are able to manufacture things in short moderate runs at price competitive places that we have never been able to do before. so the demand curve is literally being shifted because of the ability to manufacture. an so question short runs better made what the customer wants and move a lot of the jobs back to the u.s. the job isn't the labor i just eliminated from the chinese

worker on the line. and have a robot do it here. the job is on the design side imagining what it is that somebody wants and being able to deliver it for a cost effective manner. i believe it's a huge opportunity for manufacturing in the united states. >> we have seen the world's fastest electric motorcycle built on site. they're never going to sell a million of these. their objective is to get it to 400/500. those could produce thousands of those and probably be manufacturing in a distributed manner. it is another example you can get the cheap ipad cover from a chinese manufacturer for $5 or $10. for $60 you can have a beautiful ipad case that the president of the united states carries. patrick is never going to do a million of these. >> is he manufacturing them? >> in san francisco, yeah. >> it's an important thing.

people are starting to build out the narrative around the product, you know, knowing the person who makes the product is an important part of the removal -- [inaudible] [inaudible] of information around product. that's what we suffered from for thirty years. that's what allowed us push stuff overseas. it's still in my shop, it's made local, right? it's not. what people starting to question is what -- is the story. you know, they know the guy who -- mark tells that story with real pride because he knows the guy. you know, and that's what we find our customers as well. their customers know them, and have a personal relationship to them. and that's vitally important. because it's about reinvigorating a social contract. >> i think i would attribute that to facebook as helping raise the bar with the

expectations that you should know what your money is going to and what you're funding or what you're buying. because now it's easy to know the story behind the story if you adopt know the story behind the story, it's -- the words. and right, i mean, we're talking about products, we have a great example it's a food product that is a young woman who -- we're talking about jobs with she started a gluten free bakery because she had celiac and there were no products on the market for her to eat. she got a bank and got a $10,000 to get the business started. they literally made gluten free macaroons out of the back of the truck or the garage, and they started, you know, getting a little bit of attraction and they had the opportunity expand the production. hire people, and get the product in to regional grocery store.

the only thing, they needed to upcandidate the packages which was going to cost $15 ,000. for a small business, where every single dollar you earn goes back in to working capital to help grow. they department have $15 ,000 sitting on the site. side they went back to the bank and said we have a huge opportunity grow our business and take the next step. the bank said congratulation there's no way we're giving you a loan. you're less than a year old. you're too high-risk. how do we know you're going to be successful. it's not they didn't want to. the risk return model didn't work. what did they do? they went on here and racessed a $15 ,000 by preselling macaroons building their customer base. using it and building it beyond that. in three weeks, and within three months, they were shipping their product across 40 states in america. and now they're hiring people and now they're growing. and it's . >> we talk a lot of social proof

in investing. ron conway invested, that's safe for me to invest. right? what you're describing makes me think about social proof for consumers. right. you know, 600 people put up some money and help the woman raise $15 ,000 there must be something there. and i think that, you know, facebook, you know, is part of that. like you can see how many people like something or, you know, give it their stamp of approval, and this is kind of, you know, the next step in economic. >> and we're all social beings. it's interesting if you think preindustrial revolution. it lead us to do so many different things. engage in dirl different culture

and travel to new places, learn about new interest. what it didn't allow is the personal connection. what i feel facebook for the social world around it has done is brought the personal relationship back to the center. businesses can be personal and they can actually have a voice. as a consumer, you can feel like you matter. and you actually count and have a voice in a way you haven't in a long time. and that creates opportunities for the business and creates opportunities there's businesses that will use facebook to understand how they product they want to build. there's a little stuffed animal called squishble that's in new york, now, started in d.c. they literally do all the product design through facebook. they'll say, should we create this next? should it be red or blue? and ha that's will actually happen there. people will feel a connection to the product they helped make it. >> i imagine you see some of that as well. >> in businesses like that, that is a business that started without a flash sales, it's

connected to a particular designer who night be putting a few hundred things together. or a few thousand thingsed at most and having that ability to have the connection go back and look for that person's design. that the personal connection matters a lot. i think it drives job growth and business growth. >> something you mentioned, mark, how you see a lot of businesses being able to produce things in short runs. right, i think there's a bigger issue here when you talk about manufacturing. the manufacturing base right for -- about scale manufacturing and you get the economy. >> sails are relative thing. >> it's changing. >> yeah. let's talk about scale. how much boeing aircraft did they sell last year? a million? 500,000? 10,000. 5,000. hundreds? that's not mass manufacturing. that's actually hard core one at the time. build it. they have 250,000 employees.

the aircraft engine division how many train engines did they sell last year? 500? there are hundred of thousands of jobs, billions of dollars being manufactured in the united states with the high paying jobs, use these fancy kinds of tools. again, ha is cool they come down and more assessable and easy to use. here's another front example. david lang came down about year ago, and said i've never made anything in my life. i'm going write a blog about it, and i'm going take a bunch of classes, i want to see if i can figure out how to make things. nine months later he's running an underwater remote control rov company that has been crowd funded and using this to help do the manufacturing. he's already sold hundreds of them. it's not a million, but do we need million remote control underwater vehicles in i don't know. maybe we do. for $200 or $300 you can own

something that will go around the at beach. t a new toy. it's not a toy. nasa is interested. noah is interested. have orders from all over the place. this is from a guy who didn't know how to make anything from this time last year. we are living in a different space than we were five, ten, fifteen years ago. he leveraged social media. he used the blog, facebook, his friends, he used crowd funding and use it's an interesting space. it's not just about are you going sell a million units? yes, you're going to do some of the stuff. i think square probably gets it made in china. but there are plenty of products and plenty of spaces to be able to create products locally that people want locally. >> the point is also that a lot of barriers entrepreneurship as we've been hearing is getting started.

and even if you can't, you know, keep using the tools, if you do have to make a million, that's fibro. we know how to make a million widgets, right? and what's fascinating about this, the barriers to entrepreneurship, you know, not just in the digital realm, but in the physical realm are going away. all right. what would you say to, you know, a lot of manufacturing jobs have gone away and a lot of skilled labor, you know, people are out of job talk about retraining. but it seems to me, if you have an idea, you can -- . >> we talk about this in music how the democratization of the music industry is actually enabled kind of a rising tide of the middle class musician. no, you're not britney spears. you can make a living selling music online. maybe make a few $100,000 a year

and live the music. those people fifty years ago working in coffee shops by day and playing in coffee shops by night to make a living. i was in a cab talking to taxi driver, i was like how is life. it's good. i wish i could make more money. blay, he's working hard. and we talked about idea. would you start a business if you could. he's like, now that you ask there's an incredible place where taxi drivers it's never easy to find bedroom. i have a great dwrod to create a boardble bathroom. and he went crazy to give me details. why don't you do it? i need little bit of money. there's a thing called inkey go go. i need to help design. there's a thing called tech shop. and he's like holy crap.

it's possible. we're in the world where like there's all these ideas and just been repressed every never seen the light of day. the mechanism to raise the money to design the product, to distribute the product, to market the product were never there. now they are. what i think we're going to see is less about a lot of the jobs of people who work employees before are going become entrepreneur and we see the rising middle class of entrepreneurs. >> i think this -- demystification is just going. it's happening. , you know, and people, they kind of sit on the edge of the rabbit hole, right, you can make something and they flip down the rabbit hole and it's the casings and mel reason all the sudden it's everything. and so it's not only, you know, the manufacturing of big things, at some point time they go, why

can't i make this microprocessors and, you know, we're seeing that. people are tumbling down the rabbit hole and saying i can make that and that and that. they understand what's going on. what happened over the past thirty years has been that mystification. we needed that mystification to keep the system working. the system hasn't supported people. the macaroon story deep inside of it has an important point. the bank wouldn't give them the loan. >> is it mystification. i find people that call it specialization. should techshop making the . >> i think it is mystification. thing is the thing of, you know, that's too hard to do. that's, you know, we would -- . >> it used to be. the education system in many respects encouraged that. you would go and get a postgraduate degree to work out

how to make something an mba, maybe. you don't need anymore. the way of -- the tools are there for you to engage automatically. now, you just need to plug them together. there are these stories that are emerging that are allow you to wrap around the existing system. they don't support us. and they haven't supported these sorts of entrepreneurs but our tools do. that's the really vital thing. >> i think the best thing michigan can do or the city of detroit is literally a marketing campaign like knick key, you can do. everybody has ideas. and, i mean, i was in berlin, actually, there's a panel in berlin v detroit which is interesting. you can feel the energy building. there's a come plaintiff's exhibit over there of germans v the u.s. they feel like we are faster and innovative. what you're starting to sense is

build the confidence they can do it as well. we're seeing more entrepreneurship come out of here. i feel that's detroit and began needs is the big campaign saying you do it. here's all your tools, it's a matter of you deciding yes, yes, i'm going to go and try. >> to put it in context, right. it comes from new zealand. they are literally on the edge of the world. we go on the airplane and flew over here and started the company, you know. michigan and detroit is embedded inside the united states, you know, those resources are literally on your doorstep. there's no excuse not do it. it might not like look a million dollar company. it will turn in to something like that. >> if anybody has any questions. we have microphones here. lineup and i'll call on you. so, you know, one thing that we you touched upon here is the

custom runs, right, and people have been talking about a lot about mas customerrization for a long time. it's something that corporations have mastered to one degree or another. but in a way, it kind of fit in with what you were talking about everything having a story or the consumer feeling they have a connection to, you know, to the product, and when products are, you know, i don't want to say they are hand crafted. they are custom made, right, they can be custom designed, you know, for your specific needs, it's also like we're going to back to some of the connection we had, you know, almost preindustrial. >> there's a clear research in craftmanship. et sy.com is a great website of

handmade goods people are producing things in the baifm or tech shop or selling job line. again, these tools enable you to, you know, the machine doesn't compare how complicated it is. you do your design and hit print. it starts to cut and if you own the machine yourself. you walk away at the tech shop you have to stay there. the acted to customize that so it fits. i have a little app i can show you. i can design a small coffee table. it doesn't look great. i can sign a cough tee table in thirty-second. spin it around. give me the form. it's cool i'm a little bit tall it would be nice if it was economized to my leg. ikea do do that for me. it seems like it comes out of the same height. twont be nice if my furniture

fits my height. you use the type of machine. i don't know, yes there's a craft component and that particularly works well when you're talking about social media and so forth. the toos are agnostic. if building a robot and going to do 1,000 of them and charge $20,000 a pop, that's a nice business. it's not really craft, you can bruce them in short run and make a great living. >> i had the opportunity to visit techshop yesterday on the way from the airport, there was guy working on the laser cutter and had a piece of wood. he was making a game board, you know, and he could economize the game board making a side business off of it. there was another guy he had the two robot legs, he was trying to figure out how to make a robot to balance.

he hant got ton the other part. nobody figured out this part. he's a guy here in detroit, he might figure it out. >> one of the first members here was -- italian moved to detroit lost access to the tools when he got married and moved here. discovered us and he gone back to the making beautiful string bases. >> we have the picture question put it up there. keep telling the story. >> there he is. you're not going to make a l many of those. right. but at $20 ,000 a pop, and eight or ten of them a year. he can make a decent living. >> the customize and the craftman story. is that it provides competitive advantage. if i was a furniture maker, i would make tables that facility him. they would give an advantage over the mass manufacturers because they don't care about

max. he sits outside of the db that's the other important thing going on here. >> and the other element to customization. we see it happening in the crowd funding with the perk model, he a two inventedders coming up with the mobile accessory device. it was cool you put the mobile phone in the to base they created. you put a marker on the shirted and walk around and your mobile device follows. you. they were able -- they got rejected to prototype the thing, so they went to raise money to do it and got them going. they offered different custom build of the base. and through it, they maximized people's willing tons pay. they're willing to pay for the

customization. they got more money. they left less money on the table and validated their idea and because their campaign they got the venture capitalist, the one that originally rejected them. it showed there was a serious amount of interest. it gets back to the microeconomic, with you offer suchization you can actually optimize people's willing tons pay and not leave any money on the table whether it's loss or consumer surplice. >> start -- i encourage people go on that website and not log in through facebook and log in the next time. you can see what they do and play around and get the various interest. they'll learn over time. they'll start to see that these products are related interest you care about. it's a personal store to you. that you're more likely to engage and buy things from.

>> yeah. >> have you ever played around with dynamic pricing one of the first ten to donate, you get, you know, the product for $5 and then it goes up by $5 for every . >> our customers do it all the time. >> it's exciting. >> we have a question over here. introdisuse yourself and ask the question. >> i'm chris, the founder of [inaudible] we're a platform for local community. and we had a campaign at inkey go go. thank you. my question we would be remiss to have a discussion with do-it-yourself with entrepreneurship without mentioning the jobs act. i get asked all the time personally i'm skeptical of it. i'm skeptical because i think that the unhappy of investors for quickly in the cases of unsuccessful companies. a lot of legal battle and unfulfilled promise. all the benefits you are talking about being able to have presale your items, that personal

connection with your project creators and dot nors and the community you kind of miss out on all of that with equity-based crowd funding. i'd be interested to hear the panelist's opinions. >> it going ruin it all. >> i have strong opinions. you can read my "washington post" opinion from last friday. look, we have managed to all but destroy the ipo market in the united states in the last two decades. we had the 92% drop in $50 million and below ipo in the last twenty years. 90%. that is absolutely ludicrous. the fcc and the discussion said, look, it gets technical. the 5060 has raisedded $800 million last year. we don't see why it's out of balance.

this is the peak of the pyramid. this is the bottom of the per med and you're saying it's not at problem. it should be five times the size. you apt robust economy that creates jobs. you have to unleash the entrepreneur. it's ludicrous. [applause] let's get personal. right. let's say that you're a kid from downtown doit, you have the great idea for modifying your skateboard, and you have to go to friends and family to raise $10,000? really? yeah, that's the reality right now. you have to go to friends and family. there's no way for them to legally reach out to a community and tap in to engine and put a blush out. it's against the law. he can go to jail. thank god thank changing. >> for equity. the ground crowd funding you do that. times it takes more than $100,000 to get something done.

there will be fraud and problems. i am concerned about the, you know, the or fin or oregon fan -- we have swung the pendulum so far. we have destroyed the entrepreneur society. >> not because of the lack of funding on the -- other issues on the exit stake. there's, i mean, look, facebook, you guys, you pushed off the ipo, you know, for a long time longer than you probably could have ten years ago because it allows you the freedom to sister dc a different world. a lot of companies are seeing that. all the, you know, challenges that facebook is having issues with going public, what, you

know, that -- i think that's a bigger deterrent than not being able to get -- [inaudible] >> i disagree with the first comment. the reason, you know, the, you know, the reason you believe that issue because we have been living on to the regime for eighty years that allow you to find people get you ebbing fip if we had that, and took it away, you would see the incredible reduction in entrepreneurship like we have seen in the last twenty years. i actually think we can use transparency and other technology. i love the fact that fake game guy that caught, you know, inside of $25 00. i think there's some tools we can use today . >> we were talking about this backstage. it gets back to the whole discussion of, you know, social proof a lot of times people use these craft funding platforms and it's not so much that yes we're going to get return. we're going to get a product but

they're doing because they want to see this product or this company sort of come in to existence. it's almost like altruistic motivation. i think there's a danger if it becomes a pure financial transaction, that a. you attract more people looking at it purely as a financial transaction, and they want that return. and that, you know, that might there might be tension between that and motivations from the social motivations that we have seen create the amazing things. >> so we -- to address your question. equity funding going ruin crowd funding. we think no. we see there are five reasons in the world universally why people fund anything. five. and we call them five p. the first is passion. they want to see the thing idea come to life. the person succeed. they want to do good. the second is participation. they tonight part ever something

bigger than themselves. they are working 2k09 5:00. they have kids at home. they would love to do their own dream project thaw i they don't have the time. the third is the perk. they want the e maker the printer, they want the rover under water thing. the fourth is pride. they want to be reck recognized for being the funder. people were talking about how they were like funder number 25621,000. they were there first. and then the fifth reason is profit. that's only one of five. and currently the profit is illegal right now. currently the first four are dynamicically at play. people aren't just choosing unmoted elevation. there's a mix happening at the same time. there's no reason to believe why it won't happen if we added the fifth p.d. we think fundamentally that crowd funding is a social experience. and anyone who has not funded

something that way or raised money that way, does not understand that until they actually do it. because you're funding people. you're not funding idea but people. that said, with the equity crowd funding with fraud we have been at it almost five years. we've been, you know, worried about fraud since day one. the reason we are worried we want to be in business and empower people across the world. we don't want some stupid fraudster ruining it for everybody. given that, we have been committed to that. we have develop machine learn and the stuff on the back tend not just provide a completely platform where campaign with the most activity get promoted base order the own action not base what we think. it's what protecting and catching stuff and pulling stuff off the platform. >> we have two minutes left. let's get one more question. you have a question? >> my name is [inaudible] you can call me [inaudible]

i'm from oakland university. my question is more of a clarification. basically what you're saying is that a person starting out a business or [inaudible] in order to become a successful entrepreneur not so much the kill -- skill they have but the tools they are possess that they use are in possession of. >> i think it's a combination. >> a combination. >> the tools are ever an amplifier of the skills. you might be really skillful if you don't have access to the tool. it's hard work. if you have access to the tool you may kick ass. you may have access to the tool the end result may not be so great. what's different is that literally from the first time since the begins of the industrial revolution.

you can have access to the tools from the cost equivalent of a daily cough foe. that has never happened before. you can raise money on platforms through a computer you owe and tap in distribute manufacturing that will help you dislifer. this is a new day. >> you can make more mistake and not be completely destroyed by them. for the price of a cop of coffee. you try again. >> i think we're out of time. we'll land it on that note. thank you for the panelist and the great discussion. [applause] >> thank you. [applause] that was great. i don't think you could have a better discussion on the topic anywhere in the world. we're here in detroit. it was a world class discussion. i mean it. fantastic. by the way, the same set was built at techshop detroit. so enjoy that. and there's a couple of things that are going come up in the next few minutes here that are

all sort of a theme and the next speaker is one of the parts of the theme. we -- i really -- and we at tech economy wanted to create an awareness here and everywhere. i think it's maybe even more neated in detroit. there are weird and incredibly promising unexpected developments occurring in business preaccept dated by technology and this company about to come out and talk to you is an interesting example. company only been around since 2009. they are -- i'll let him describe what they are. they just last week raised $68 million from the world most famous venture capitalist firms. anyway, ben, come out and shake us up a little bit, i hope. [applause]

>> hello, david told me i have ten minutes to change your entire perception of everything you see in the world. i'm going do that. see if it works. the empire state building, i live in new york. i'm guilty that have. the empire state building was built in one year and 45 days to built the empire state building. it took -- [laughter] two years and two months to build the potato peeler. something wrong here. eleven years later, we don't have a freedom tower. this is the first jetliner p80 from idea and design to delivery was 143 days. that's what our country was capable of when we needed to be

innovative. fifty years since the original concord was designed and it's still the fastest commercial jet in the world, and it was flown completely mechanically, like no onboard computers and switches and things like this. there's something to be learned by all of this. and that is as the world has moverred in to a place where we're making acts and technologies and servers and things like this. we have forgotten about the things that actually touch all of us as human being. real things that you can hold in your hand, look at out on the street, and sometimes drop on your foot. companies all around the world are having trouble figuring how do we be innovative and capture this. even pg this is a quote, you can't read it, says we haven't created a new meaningful

category in some time. this is from the ceo of pg just two months ago. so what does it mean? it means that we need do something about it and that we need take all of the cool things happening in fj and community and internet and put it in to things that matter. the things we touch and feel every day. they haven't made anything new or meaningful in some time. guess who has? a bunch of crazy folks locked in glass conference room in new york city. we launched brand new consumer products every single week every tuesday at 12:00 and thursdays at 12:00 regardless what's going on in the world. that's going increase to about ten products per week by the end of the year. the reason i started the company, i was an inventers myself, i realized making physical product is really hard. you need have there's some sort of list of tons of different disciplines from design to

engineering and manufacturing and retail merchandising. so many things need come together to push one brand new product in the to the real world. what it results is in a world where invention is inassessable. now, we strive to make it assessable we do it by leveraging three things. three things that any company can activate, employ, and put forth to bring all the technology innovation and all the passion that bilged the state building in one year and 45 days in to everything around you. technology, community, and experts. it's the coming together of all three of these things that makes it possible for us to defie gravity every sickle weem. we have got to place we launch new consumer product somewhere between $5 and $50,000. when every company to rubber maid they are spends millions dollars just to throw something

against the wall. by the way, the guy pictured here. we call him around the office detroit. he's here somewhere. his name is richard. he runs shop. everything that comes out of this guy's hands. he went to college here. [applause] where are are you? stand up. i can't see. he's here. so all of in happens where people come together submit their idea, some of the ideas are as simple as recycled science fair projects they had in high school. this is one that was submitted bade guy in wisconsin who graduated high school at the time hep said it's a problem and i needed solution. i can't fit all of my power cords in to the power grip. 709 people came together. and design process and all of the sudden wret world pivotable power strip.

you can pivot your outlets and everything. [applause] this is just one product. we do it twice per week. jake's product is closing on million units sold. a 24-year-old kid from wisconsin is made over close to half a million dollar just a year after his product hit the marketplace. this is coming together is a world can do. his product can be found at the best retail stores in the world. now i slow down a bit. so wrap your head around this. everyone talks about the future. the future, the future. 100 years, 100 years of progress in the fair town over 100 years ago, you guys had a guy that made something like this. it was a car, it was called model t. it was the best selling car in 1909. and it came in black. it got 17 miles per gallon.

here we're 100 years later, 100 years later, like, wrap your head around this. the best selling car in america is still a ford! it's still black and gets 16 miles to the gallon. [laughter] that was 100 years worth of progress. let's look at what a community can do in 100 days. 100 days of progress. jenny, a student in atlanta, she looked around her dorm room and said, everyone around me is using milk crates for things other than milk. and this has been going on forever. when was the last time you saw a milk crate carrying milk if hold records and books. she was tired. they are ugly and i don't want them. second of all, they're not built for this. so how do we take the milk crate and revolution it and change the

world. she submitted it earlier this year. a community got to work and we immediately started sketching it figuring how to revolution nice it. we found a ?op new jersey, they spend a few days on it. we found a factory in vermont, they had big molding machines. soon are or later there were tens of thousands of these being made. and jenny and her product went from $5 to $1 million in four days. knead in the u.s. made by all of us toct as community and people in less than 100 days. it's available at staples and officer max and target. so all of this comes down to one simple thing in my opinion, back then when we were building buildings a year and 45 days and defying the lawings of physics by making super sonic jets.

we did it because we had to. that's what we were paying attention to and put our passion in to as a nation. and now we'ring our passion in to making iphone cames games and things that aren't actually moving us forward as a society. why this place works and the community is so dambisa productive is because of the one quote from mr. ben franklin another awesome ben. he said, tell me if you tell me i'm going forget. i'm going it forget it. i don't care about the new product and discount. i don't care about promotion and the car now comes in pink. i'm going forget about it. he said, show me, i might remember if you show me that car and show me why it's better. i might remember the fact that i should stlait empire state building. but if you involve me i'm truly going to understand.

and when people understand the passion that goes in to a product, and the passion that goes in to building a project and coming together as a community, then they're going to understand and really going have your back. so thank you, and please do things other than iphone apps, i guess. [applause] [applause] the former ceo of freddie mac talks about financial relegislation and mortgage industry.

.. it's really the only place to get the real deal. i also enjoyed newsmakers and the book programs. i like that the commentary is